We continually attempt to charge declined patrons during the month of their decline. Please note that a patron will only ever have one declined bill. If they decline once, we will not continue to charge them for future months. Instead, they will be restricted from viewing patron-only content until they pay for their past-due bill.
They are essentially not a patron for future months until they've successfully paid the past due bill. Once the membership is paid for, they will regain access to your patron-only feed.
To do our best to collect past due bills, we:
- Retry processing payments up to six times within the month they declined.
- Email patrons to let them know there was an issue with billing and instructions to update their payment info.
- Place a banner on their Patreon page prompting them to update payment info
- Restrict access to patron-only content until past due bills are collected
Your Patron Relationship Manager lets you view each patron's status and send messages to those who have declined. We automatically email patrons about updating payment information when their payments decline but personal messages can provide a helpful and effective reminder to patrons. If you want to reduce declines, consider sending a personal note.
You can review your monthly declines by visiting your Earnings dashboard. It's important to note: if you view this dashboard at the beginning of a month the current month's decline rate typically exceeds the rate from prior months. This is normal. The overall decline rate is typically high in the first few days of the month and falls over time as we retry payments and encourage patrons to update their payment methods.
If you feel a patron is evading payment, you can also block them, which will remove their pledge to you and prevent them from messaging you, accessing your patron-only content, or pledging to you again in the future.